How do Backlinks Work? – SEO FAQs Simply Answered

In fact, backlinks are so important that building a sustainable business without them is impossible.

In this article, we will explain how do backlinks work and basically everything you need to know to understand their importance.

Before we get into the details we need to understand what are Links.

What are Links and How to Link to Other Websites

Links are website names that are used to connect one section of the website with another. When we reference a website we add a URL to another site. That’s done to further explain a topic, cite a source or explain a meaning of a specific word.

Depending on the platform creating a link might require using a code snippet (example: <a href=”https://domain-name.com“>Anchor Text</a>) or might be as simple as pasting a URL.

Links can be placed to another section on your own website or a completely different website.

Inbound backlinksor links – those are links within your website, such as a link from your homepage to your service page Or from one blog post to another.

Outbound Backlinksor links – those are backlinks that link to other sources of information outside of your own page – such as Wikipedia, Facebook, etc.

This means that there are 2 options how you can link, that is within your homepage or to external resources.

How do Backlinks Work?

Links are also called backlinks and they transfer people from one section of the website to another.

Backlinks connect or redirect one site to another and function as an authoritative “Upvotes” of the site which has received the backlink.

The more backlinks a site has, the more authoritative it will be. It’s because backlinks transfer link value and the more backlinks together with link value one site has the better it will rank on Search Engines.

For example: If we Check Backlinks for a site like BusinessInsider.com we will discover that it has a lot of links pointing to this site – 16,703,699 backlinks to be exact. These links transfer link value and improve BusinessInsider’s authority, and Google often ranks this site very high on the first page.

How to Create a Backlink?

If you want to create a backlink all you have to do the following:

circle the text on which you want to place the link

and locate the “add link icon”

once you click on this icon you will be able to add a backlink to another resource.

How to add a backlink in WordPress:

Step 1: Circle the text – For example: add backlink here

Step 2: Click on the “Add link” icon:

Step 3: Then paste the URL in the pop-up window that will appear next to the text you circled:

3. Backlink Placement

You should also consider the following things when thinking if the specific backlink will have any value:

How many other outbound links are on the site – no page should have hundreds of outbound links, that’s unnatural. Creating lists of articles, tools, etc. that’s a common practice but stay away from “link graveyards”.

If it’s industry related – a backlink from sausage producer when your company is a nail salon – will have almost no value.

From which TLD and country link is coming – If a European business has a large percentage (over 10%) of backlinks from Asian sites – this will affect your site rather badly.

This 3 aspects are extremely important when you consider you backlink relevancy.

Backlink Technical Aspects

For a complete understanding of how backlinks work you need to understand how Google finds them.

It might take several weeks before Google indexes your backlinks.

But there are ways to speed it up.

To see all the backlinks Google has discovered head over to Google Search Console.

These technical elements are important to note, but they shouldn’t affect whether you pursue a link or not, only how you report it. These elements can affect how Google interprets relevance and authority, or if they can crawl the link at all.